


If a Tinker Were My Trade

by chaosmanor



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Alternate Reality, Fic Exchange, M/M, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-23 10:47:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosmanor/pseuds/chaosmanor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Would you still find me?</p>
            </blockquote>





	If a Tinker Were My Trade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [salable_mystic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/salable_mystic/gifts).



> Disclaimer: Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.
> 
> Betaed by [mrkinch](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mrkinch).
> 
> Story title and summary are from If I Were a Carpenter, written by Tim Hardin.

Orlando didn't know the woman with the rumpled hair and sad eyes sitting at the café table, a glass of water by her elbow. But he did know the man sitting across the table from her, holding her hands and whispering to her. He probably even knew what the man was saying.

"Do you know what you are asking for? Do you understand what you will have to give in return?"

Orlando watched the woman leave the café, then walked across and slid into the seat she had vacated.

The man looked up from the book in his hands, and whatever he had been about to say, maybe about rudeness or intrusion, was replaced by an unfolding smile.

"Hi, Viggo," Orlando said, feeling his own smile warming his whole body.

"Orlando," Viggo said, and Orlando wondered why no one else in the café seemed to be noticing the light spilling out of Viggo. "Have you been looking for me? Is there something you need?"

The warmth of Viggo's hand on Orlando's was reassuring, a reminder that no matter what everyone thought, there was still room for a little magic in the world.

Orlando shook his head. "This is random chance. I'm here seeing my son Flynn, and…"

"You don't get to tell me, of all people, that our paths have crossed again by chance," Viggo said. 

"This is the third time," Orlando said. "Isn't it?"

Viggo grinned broadly, a wide smile showing the wear and miles of his life. 

"The third time is true," Viggo said. 

Orlando looked down at where Viggo was still touching callused fingers to the back of Orlando's hand. "What would have happened if I had just walked past the café?"

"That would have been the truth," Viggo said, letting go of Orlando's hand and leaning back. 

"Does that mean the other times weren't?" Orlando asked.

Viggo made a flickering motion with his fingers, and Orlando knew what the motion meant. _Be careful what you say, for words take shape in ways you don't intend._

"I've missed you," Orlando said. "That's already true."

 

**First Time**

Somewhere through the pain, morphine and disbelief, Orlando knew his mother was speaking to him. 

"I have to leave for while," Sonia said. "There's a person I need to see. Try and sleep, and I'll be back later."

The hospital room was a blur of medical staff and analgesics and confusions. Nurses came in every hour and asked him if he could feel them touching his toes, but everything below the red hot skewers in his back was absent, as though gravity had melted him away, at 9.81m/s2.

It's not the fall that hurts, it's the stopping at the bottom. 

Jokes weren't funny anymore, no matter how much of the good stuff the nurses gave him.

The blur was interrupted by Sonia returning, and when Orlando opened his eyes, a scruffy man was leaning over her shoulder as she kissed Orlando's cheek.

"Hi there, I'm Viggo," the man said in a soft-edged American accent. "Sonia asked me to come and see you."

"You don't look like a doctor," Orlando said.

"You don't look like you can't walk," Viggo said. 

Sonia patted Orlando's arm. "I'll be outside if you need me. Viggo wants to talk with you in private."

Viggo pulled a plastic chair over beside Orlando's hospital bed and sat down on it, pulling himself down to be at Orlando's eye level.

"Sonia tells me you aren't going to walk again," Viggo said.

"That's what the doctors reckon," Orlando said.

"What do you think?" Viggo asked.

Orlando paused. "My body feels like that, but my brain says it can."

Viggo nodded. "I can fix your body, but it will cost you."

"Sonia…" Orlando started. Surely Sonia would have discussed fees with whoever this person was?

"No, you," Viggo said. "This is a transaction between me and you."

"I don't have anything," Orlando said. "Especially now."

"You have time, a lot of future, chances, life, options…" Viggo said. "As it happens, I don't actually want any of those things. I already have all I need. But…"

"But?"

"But, if I do this, there will be implications for you. Complications. A little more magic in your life, possibly than you would want. You might not want to make this deal. You might want to find out how to reassess your priorities and adjust."

"What does complications even mean?" Orlando asked.

"It means that you will not be able to make empty promises," Viggo said. "Maybe sometimes things will be literal, rather than figurative."

"And you'll fix my back? This sounds like a reasonable trade," Orlando said.

"Sure, you say that, but wait until the first time it happens," Viggo said. His smile was wide and warm, better than any of the drugs the nurses were giving Orlando. "I'd take the reassess and adjust option, personally."

"Right now, I'm willing to trade hyperbole for walking," Orlando said.

 

Finding out exactly what he had exchanged didn't take Orlando long. 

He worked it out on his first visit to his local pub, perched gingerly on the hard wooden bench to keep the pressure off the dressing still covering the surgical wound on his back. One of his housemates, Ross, said, "No, no lager for you. Berks who break their backs get a lovely glass of house Valdepeñas."

"Why?" Orlando complained, looking at the glass of raw red wine placed in front of him. "That's going to taste like cat piss…"

"Because the loo is up the stairs," Ross said. "You drink lager, you need to piss, we have to drag you up a flight of stairs."

Orlando pretended to grump, too pleased at being out of the hospital and back in the real world to actually care, and picked up his glass of wine.

A second later, he sprayed red wine across the table and over Ross' girlfriend, and kept on spitting and scrubbing his mouth against his arm.

"Oh fuck, oh fuck," he said. "That really is cat piss."

Ross took the glass off him and tasted the wine as well, then spat on the pub floor and made retching noises.

 

After that, Orlando became very cautious about similes in general, wishing for things (after the first time he jumped directly from a Monday morning to a Friday), hypocatastastic and rhetorical figures of speech (no one actually wants a stomach full of butterflies, to go bananas, have their skin crawl or really have something that is bullshit be bullshit), promises (after the universe tried to kill him with buses, a car and lightning for not making it home for Mothers Day) and lies (also ugly and involving yet more bullshit). 

Sonia, when he went home the day after Mothers Day, was amused.

"Two buses?" Sonia said. "And a Fiat?"

"Within ten minutes," Orlando complained. "Then the house was hit by lightning. It was terrible. It's all because of Viggo."

Sonia handed Orlando a mug of tea and sat beside him on her couch.

"Ah, yes," she said. "You've never talked about him."

"Is he a friend?" Orlando asked. "How did you know about him?"

Sonia looked embarrassed. "I wasn't going to tell you, except that you recovered when no one thought you would, and maybe it was because of him. One of the nurses on the ward told me about this New Age healer that had visited someone else the week before, said I could find him by asking at this bookstore. The bookstore sent me to a café, where this man was sitting a table, reading. I could see it was him.

"I told him about you, and he came back to the hospital to meet you, see if he could help. He said any payment would be between you and him, but I gave him some money anyway because he looked so hungry."

"He fixed me," Orlando said. "He fixed my back. But now, when I say stupid things, or lie, or, apparently, don't visit my mother, bad stuff happens."

Sonia pursed her lips at Orlando, and Orlando suspected she was trying not to laugh at him. "Really?" Sonia said. "What a terrible burden."

Orlando put his hands over his face. "I know!" he groaned. "What am I going to do?"

 

**Second Time**

 

The second time, Viggo wasn't expecting Orlando. He wasn't expecting anyone, not by any of the means by which he usually formed expectations about people's imminent arrivals. No inklings, no forebodings, harbingers, no. No dreams or foreshadowing. 

The lack of advance notice meant that Viggo, who was very, very good at being somewhere else, was still in the same place when Orlando took his hand and said, "Viggo and I have met before."

"Really?" the man called Elijah asked. "Really? How?"

Sean Bean, who Viggo did know, and whose LA couch Viggo was sleeping on, cut in with, "I introduced them."

Elijah turned to Sean and said, "But not me? Was it something I said?"

Later, on the deck of Sean's rented house, Orlando found Viggo again.

"Sorry," Orlando said quietly. "I shouldn't have said anything. Elijah is still sulking."

Viggo shrugged, checking over Orlando's shoulder to see if anyone was listening.

"I shouldn't have been here," Viggo said. "Sean said he was inviting some friends over for drinks. I had no idea the two of you knew each other."

"We've made a movie together," Orlando said. "You haven't seen it?"

Viggo shook his head. "Sean tried to show me something, but it wasn't my thing."

"How do you know Sean?" Orlando asked.

"You should know better than to ask me that," Viggo said. "How's your back?"

Orlando's eyes went wide in the light reflected off Sean's rented pool.

"My back is excellent, as long as I look after it. It's a miracle I recovered from such a severe injury."

Viggo smiled. He could still see the lingering remnants of the repair work he'd done, like tiny tendrils of light clinging to Orlando's skin. It made him want to touch Orlando, to remember a great many things that he had forgotten.

The sound from indoors slid further and further away, until the voices, music and clatter were a distant hum. Viggo could see Orlando's face clearly in the half-light, the clear wonder in his eyes.

"And the cost?" Viggo asked.

"I have adjusted to being very literal and honest. I am very relieved the world understands that my job is acting, and doesn't smite me when I'm working. Us meeting like this, is this part of what is supposed to happen?" Orlando asked.

"I don't know," Viggo admitted. "Just because neither of us planned this does not make it unintended."

"I feel..." Orlando said, and Viggo made a hushing noise and pressed a finger to his lips.

"Shhh, be careful," Viggo whispered. 

"But..." Orlando complained, against Viggo's fingertip. "If I'm quiet, how can I ask you to kiss me?"

"Do you want to do this?" Viggo asked, moving his hands to Orlando's shoulders, curling his fingers around the warmth. 

"Yes," Orlando said, winding his arms around Viggo's neck.

Orlando made noises in his throat as they kissed, hungry noises that made Viggo pull him even closer, one hand on the back of his hand, the other protectively across Orlando's lower back, where the web of magic still glowed warmly against Viggo's palm.

"We need to go somewhere," Orlando said, mouth against Viggo's neck. "Somewhere private, where no one can see us…"

"Or hear?" Viggo suggested, looking across the deck, to where people he didn't know where drinking beer and laughing at jokes he didn't want to understand.

The cloud Viggo wrapped them in was warm and dense, muffling light and sound from the house so the only glow was from the city night sky overhead.

"Private enough?" Viggo asked against Orlando's neck.

"What are you?" Orlando asked, as Viggo scraped gentle teeth over his neck and worked to free his T-shirt from his jeans.

"Am I not standing close enough?" Viggo murmured, rocking his hips against Orlando's. "Can't you tell?"

Orlando made a choking noise, and started laughing. Viggo would have fist-pumped his success at amusing Orlando, except both of his hands were busy.

"Apart from that," Orlando said, when he could breathe. "Are you a wizard?"

"Something like," Viggo said. "I'm mostly a vagabond."

The feeling of Orlando's fingernails scratching at the back of Viggo's neck sent shivers down Viggo's spine, and he sighed as Orlando worked a hand between their bodies and began to flick his button fly open.

"I hope you're not planning on leaving in the next few minutes," Orlando said. "Because I'd like to show you that my spine works just fine when I'm kneeling down."

"Oh, yeah," Viggo said. "I can stay for more than a few minutes."

 

The lights were still on in Sean's apartment when they went in from the deck, later on, but the living area was empty of people. Still littered with glasses, bottles and pizza boxes, yes, but empty of people.

Orlando uncurled himself from around Viggo. "I guess this is where I leave."

The floor in front of the couches seemed to be free of both pizza and beer incidents when Viggo poked at the carpet with his bare toes. "I've been sleeping right here. Maybe you're too tired to drive, and you could stay here with me? Do you know Sean well enough to do that?"

Orlando grinned. "Sean hasn't told you much about New Zealand, has he?"

"No," Viggo said. "Should he?"

"Yes," Orlando said. "Ask him about the mudslide. After that, I can most definitely hook up with his house guest on his living room floor."

Viggo shoved the coffee table over to make room. "I'll get the blankets for the couch cushions, you get the lights?" Viggo suggested.

Viggo tossed all of the cushions from the couch on to the floor and threw a blanket over them, as Orlando switched off the lights in the rest of the apartment, then that room.

In the ambient light coming through the sliding glass doors to the deck, Viggo watched Orlando peel off his T-shirt and drop his jeans to the carpet, so he stood naked beside the makeshift bed.

Viggo tossed his own shirt onto the floor and undid his jeans so they slid to the ground.

"Don't speak," Viggo whispered, flicking his fingers through the air, through the chance rippling around them, testing the flow of the future. 

Something was happening, swirling around them, as they wound the blankets around themselves on the cushions. Any words would shape the flow, changing the future in ways that Viggo couldn't see, and the risks from a misspoken word were great. 

The last time Viggo had let a situation like this unfold, he had wound up with a son. He doubted that particular event was going to repeat itself in quite the same way, but something else was hovering just out of his sight. 

Viggo would think about what this thing might be when he wasn't kissing and touching Orlando, who was delightfully and amazingly naked against Viggo's skin.

Sweat slicked Orlando's skin and his breath rasped against Viggo's ear. Viggo could feel both of their pulses pounding, shaking their bodies, and Orlando gasped and groaned, working his cock deeper into the curl of one of Viggo's hands then pushing back against the promise of Viggo's other hand.

Orlando's eyes were open, watching Viggo's face, and Viggo wondered how much Orlando could see of the incandescent possibility in the air.

A flicker and a gasp, and Orlando was gone, coming in slow quiet gasps in Viggo's hand, so open and present it made Viggo's chest hurt with longing.

A long breath in, and Orlando grinned at Viggo and slid down, taking blankets and dislodging cushions. Viggo closed his eyes and uncurled his hands, because he wasn't strong enough to resist.

Later, still buzzing from coming, Viggo pulled Orlando close, arranging him comfortably: head, hip and long legs. 

"Shh," Viggo whispered, smoothing the back of Orlando's neck.

Orlando lifted one sleepy hand in the half-darkness, trying to capture the tiny motes of light floating over them, and sighed as the flashes drifted through and around his fingers.

"Tomorrow?" Orlando asked, and Viggo kissed his forehead.

"Tomorrow."

 

Viggo woke as the sky outside began to lighten, and stayed comfortably warm and quiet while Sean went to the bathroom and ran a faucet. 

Sean might have looked around the corner from the hallway; Viggo didn't look up to check.

Sunlight began to stream through the glass doors as the sun rose, making Orlando stir and wake, then wander off to use Sean's bathroom, still naked. 

When he came back, yawning and stretching, he sat on the blanket beside Viggo.

"So?" Orlando asked. "About that?"

Viggo pushed himself upright, leaning back against the cushion-less couch. 

"We can talk," Viggo said. "Are you okay?"

"I feel fantastic," Orlando said, grinning. "Can I ask about the…?" He made a swirling motion over his head.

"Yeah," Viggo said. "Most people don't see, well, time lines, or chance, but you made a trade a while back and got given an extra dose of magic in your life, so you can."

Orlando nodded and touched Viggo's forearm. "What does it mean?"

"This is a fork in the road, for both of us. I can't tell if it's a decision branch, where one or both of has to choose something, or a chance node, where the event has chosen one or both of us," Viggo said. 

"So what happens now? We wait?" Orlando asked.

"That's a decision in itself," Viggo said. 

Orlando leaned against Viggo. "I don't think we'll be bored while we wait."

The weight of Orlando's hand was reassuring when Viggo reached for it.

"Do you know about the Rule of Three?" Viggo asked.

"Of course," Orlando said. "It's the keystone of theatre and comedy. It takes twice to establish a pattern, before you can flip the pattern for comedic or emotional effect."

"What if you don't flip the pattern? What if you reinforce it?" Viggo asked. 

"Boring theatre," Orlando said. "The audience expects to be flipped, and they get cranky if you don't."

"Okay," Viggo agreed. "Assume no one is watching."

Orlando pulled himself upright, but didn't take his hand away. "A theatre with no audience and a pattern that doesn't flip? Third times matter then."

Viggo nodded.

"And this?" Orlando asked, waving his free hand in the air.

"Be careful what you say, it's still there, you just can't see it as easily in the daylight," Viggo said, gesturing with his other hand where he could see the chance waiting for both of them, flickering fingers at the future.

"What would happen if there was a third time?" Orlando whispered.

Viggo closed his eyes, trying to test the ways forward, then shook his head and looked at Orlando again. "I can't see. What do you think would happen?"

"I think we'd make each other very happy," Orlando said. 

The bands of light through the glass shimmered and rippled around Orlando, and Viggo touched his hair, then his cheek. "How would you feel if I went off vagabonding?"

"How would you feel if I disappeared off on a movie shoot?" 

Viggo waited, and Orlando said, "I'd give you a key, and hope you came back. I'd give you a credit card, and hope you didn't lose it before you decided to buy a plane ticket."

"And I would hope the key still worked when I came back, that you hadn't moved or changed the locks. I'd hope I could buy my own plane ticket. I'd mostly hope that you still wanted me to come back."

"That's a lot of hoping," Orlando said.

"For a lot of happiness."

Orlando sat silently, forehead creased, then shook his head. "I can't do it, not right this moment, not as a conscious decision."

Viggo touched Orlando's throat, then his chest, where his heart beat like bird wings.

"Then this is goodbye."

Orlando left while Viggo stood under Sean's shower, and by the time Viggo had brushed his teeth, the chance had settled as the future adjusted itself to Orlando's decision. Viggo touched the paths, choosing the one that took him away from LA, and went to find clean clothes from his pack.

Sean was sitting on the reassembled couch, and he watched Viggo pull on freshly laundered jeans and a T-shirt that had been Sean's until the day before.

"Orlando didn't stay?" Sean asked.

"He just left," Viggo said. "He had other places to be."

Viggo sat down beside Sean on the couch to pull on sneakers. "Sean? Do you regret your deal?"

"Would it make a difference if I said I did?" Sean asked. 

"No, I can't undo it," Viggo said. "But I think I was much harder back then, when I was young, than I am now. I cut some bad deals for people."

Sean was silent while Viggo tied laces.

"No," Sean finally said. "No, I don't regret it. I would still rather have my career than a happy relationship, even after three divorces. Do you have regrets?"

Viggo looked up from his shoes, aware he was surprised by the question.

"Yes, yes. Yes I do."

"Like not having chosen a different life?" Sean asked. 

"I can't regret that, because I didn't choose the magic--it chose me," Viggo said. "I do, however, regret all the times I've hurt people."

Sean nodded. "I'll look after Orlando," he said. "I can do that for you."

Viggo patted Sean's arm. "Thank you for that, and for letting me sleep here again."

 

**Third Time**

 

They stood on the footpath outside of the café, and Orlando pushed his sunglasses on against the Brisbane sunshine. 

"I have something I have to do," Orlando said. "It will only take a couple of minutes. Would you mind?"

Viggo shook his head. "I don't have anywhere I have to be."

The locksmith was across the street from the café, and Viggo waited outside while Orlando went in and handed over the keys to his London apartment to be copied, and paid.

On the footpath, Orlando wrote his security code, address and phone number on the back of the locksmith's business card, and gave Viggo the card and keys.

"Oh," Viggo said, holding the keys and card in his hands.

"Well?" Orlando asked. "What does chance and time have to say this time?"

Viggo opened his worn canvas wallet and secured the keys and card in the deepest folds, and looked around and up.

"Have a look," Viggo said, and his voice was so warm and gentle that Orlando couldn't stop from reaching out and touching his shoulder.

Orlando pushed his sunglasses up and looked up at the brilliantly clear Australian summer sky where currawongs dipped and swerved. 

The lights, however, were still, hovering and shimmering in the air between the two of them.

"So beautiful," Orlando said, moving his hand slowly through the space, watching the brightness move and settle again. "What does it mean?"

"Whatever we want it to," Viggo said. 

In Orlando's hotel room, Viggo asked, "Third time?"

Orlando nodded, arms wound around Viggo's neck. "I have more than enough hope now."

"And I have much less work still to do in the world," Viggo said. "It's time for me to stop wandering."

END


End file.
